Not exactly. It is just that if there is too large a cohort of extremely intelligent kids, it will change the whole dynamic of the school, and lead to problems with legacy admits, donor admits, athlete admits, etc. Just imagine the difference between a place like Stuyvesant High School in NYC versus, say, Deerfield or Lawrenceville, just to pick two. Most kids at either of those boarding schools would not feel comfortable academically at Stuy, and, frankly, vice versa.
There is no right or wrong answer here. And most boarding schools do not have the luxury of filling a class with the very brightest kids anyway (although certainly some do). It is just a choice of how to run the business, not dissimilar from the choices made by many of the most elite colleges. All I am saying is that there is a group of kids chosen primarily for outstanding intellectual ability and academic potential at any boarding school that has the luxury of shaping its class, and that group is relatively small.
Well, of course. The school in large measure is geared towards kids around the 75-85 percentile (with a few school exceptions of course). Could they do as well if 50-75% of the class came in with >98% scores, with the classroom and curricular dynamics that would follow from that? I doubt it.
Thanks for the advice everyone, I just want to make it clear that I’m not all just math lol.
I also submitted an art portfolio (I’m pretty good, I’d like some feedback so if you want to see, shoot me a pm), and I’m a good writer so my writing sample (for andover) and ssat essay are pretty good.
I visit nursing homes with my synagogue, am a member of two service-oriented Jewish youth groups (no leadership though, it’s reserved for upperclassmen).
I debate (placed 6th at a big competition last year as a seventh grader competing against 8th graders), volunteered at a garden that donated to homeless shelters for a few years (stopped in mid-seventh grade because they closed), was in a high school play as a 6th grader (ensemble but it was competitive), and play ukulele, guitar, and piano (none of them particularly well). Also I bake elaborate pastries (wrote one of the essays for every school I applied to about my love of french pastries, lol). I swam for a few months last year but my mom made me quit because I lost too much weight.
I skipped 8th grade and did 5th through 7th grade online.
I spend a few hours each day watching my little brothers (one is 2 and the other is 6 months) and helping my other siblings with homework (9yo sister and 12yo brother.)
I have very little free time, lol. Am I competitive?
If you want to hijack your own thread with a “chances” post, there is a forum for that… 
@ChoatieMom lol, true, but for some reason the people frequenting the chances forum aren’t as helpful as everyone has been here:)
That’s because most of us avoid that forum like the plague, but we’re glad it exists so we don’t have to be annoyed by those posts. 